Native Son
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: He loves this city. It does things for his amusement, mass pratfalls and mass executions. It believes in bats and Harvey Dent and getting ahead while you still have one. Pre-TDK. One-shot.


**Native Son**

He runs the cards through his hands, a short deck— 51 in all. He feels a little stuck here, a little trapped, looking at the skyline he's seen every day of his life— well, apart from that month spent in the basement. But that was an anomaly. He'd put the time to good use, planned revenge and counted bricks. There were seven thousand, eight hundred and twelve in the walls, if he remembers correctly. The revenge went well, he suspects, though this he recalls with less clarity.

He's not trapped, of course, not really. Everything's got an opening _some_where, _something_ to be exploited. And if the ground is too well covered, if things are too far gone, he knows in the back of his mind that he'll find a way to fly.

There's no call to run, at the moment, nothing to run from, and that's probably what makes him feel so stifled. The last month has passed with relative quiet. Gotham falls and it picks itself back up again, only to trip and go down once more; he regards these mass pratfalls as attempts at entertainment, for his own personal amusement. Some of the gags come off better than others. The one where the people are by turns frightened and annoyed by a giant bat stalking the streets is particularly good.

The past actions of the power-hungry and the just plain mad have not gone unnoticed. He's glad of that, because while he may set records, he won't have to set a precedent.

When his bout with the fear toxin came, he'd been out seeing the sights. People running around like heads with the chicken cut off, he told himself with immense pleasure. No one took any notice of him till it started sinking into their overtaxed craniums— and then they screamed, yelled, yelped, ran away or attempted to kill him in premature self-defense. He fended them off easily, watching with keen interest as their frightened faces took on new aspects and features— the grotesque, the bloated faces of the drowned, the tragicomic circus performers, each one of them in its own way a reflection of his own. He laughed, but that seemed to make things worse.

Evidently he was the only one who got the joke.

He loves this city, loves how it shelters the insanely criminal and the criminally insane. How he can still hear the school bells of the elementary where he attended till he was expelled for putting pipe bombs in the lunch room. Loves how he can stroll the streets with barely a glance in his direction, scars and all, because there's always going to be someone stranger, in Gotham. He's never felt alone here, and it's not just the voices echoing out of the corners, either.

He's younger than he looks, with the scars and the crooked curve of his twice-broken back, his twisted shoulders, the pins in his knee giving him an ungainly walk. This is his second life, he's fond of telling people whether or not they ask, though he's thinking now that he needs another introduction. _Do you wanna know_, he could say— because nobody would ask. 'Cause that was rude.

Oh, this city. Oh, this crazy, mixed-up town. It harbors more than it hinders, blesses the growth of the criminal underbelly. It has a feel, a smell, a taste. It believes in bats, and Harvey Dent, and getting ahead while you still have one. It's got heart, he thinks with a crooked smile. It is eminently human.

_This city— this city deserves— _

_Something better._

Bloodied from his recent exertions on the streets— Joker 2, pedestrians 0— he sits in the quiet room and stares out the window at the familiar buildings. He taps his fingers against his chin. He can't stand masks for any length of time, so that's out of the question. It's the claustrophobia that gets him, all the more real for its ridiculousness. What if the mask sinks into his skin? Becomes a part of him? If he goes around looking like Nixon or Frankenstein till the end of his days?

This, again, makes him chuckle; it isn't hard to get him to laugh. Everyone always said he has a keen sense of humor.

No masks, though.

No matter. He'll work it out as he goes along. Play it by ear. Fly by night. Like the bat.

He sits in his chair, watching the window. Waits for the sun to come up and the city to be discovered. Shuffles the deck.


End file.
